Swiper

I have to get over the thievery of words & turns of phrase & tangents... I come across scraps of things I wrote in other books and become paranoid that I subconsciously took them, maybe I didn't, maybe I thought of them independently, no way to remember or be sure... and then no matter how far off on a tangent I take something someone else has already taken it there... the excitement I feel at finding something new in researching one thing I want to write about is stifled, it has already taken off in every direction without me and before me. Is all that's left fracturing stuff into near-nonsense? The only way to make something original to disconnect it so thoroughly that... ? No, no. Just do it well! Call it homage! Onward, forward, ho!